codyg1985’s Think Tank

The folks at Wired Magazine are looking at a day where machines will perform tasks autonomously and human skill will be rendered obsolete. Fully self-sufficient robots and machines will stay in the realm of science-fiction because, well, science-fiction has taught us that if made autonomous, robots will take over the world, leaving everything, including their creators, in the dust.

Robots will get smarter, and eventually will be semi-autonomous. However, robots will only be self-sufficient in the tasks that they are to perform. The robots are not going to gain knowledge on how to perform other tasks they are not designed to perform. Moreover, robots won’t be programmed to replicate themselves by gathering the materials to build copies of themselves, much less improved versions of themselves.

Most important, new robots will need to be designed and built, and humans will still be up to the challenge of that.